For The Best
by Sargaetorian
Summary: Breakups are never easy. But sometimes...it's for the best. Sasunaru drabble


**A/N: **Writer's block drabble.

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**For The Best**

We've both known it for a while.

Endless months of arguing followed by halfhearted apologies, weeks of avoiding each other, and hours of forced smiles and stiff shoulders in the midst of family and friends. We hate it, this feeling of unfamiliar coldness toward each other, and what makes it worse is that we can't reverse it.

_Ladies and gentlemen, please prepare for gate departure._

The crackling drone of the voice echoing throughout the aircraft is blocked out by my thoughts. My profound realization that this man sitting next to me, whom I've loved and cherished for almost eight years, is reduced in my mind to nothing more than a complete stranger.

It hurts to know that he feels the same about me too.

Yet we've never done anything about this strange feeling of isolation before. Our lives a mess, but our determination and honesty chained and bound by the cruel, icy monster of fear to a place inside my chest that tightens whenever I think about us. About him. I am relieved, however, because one glance at him this morning told me that today was the day. The sheer determination in his empty black eyes telling me that we'd set this straight once and for all.

"Naruto," he says, his voice soft but cutting through all other background noise.

"Sasuke," I reply.

He hesitates, so I take it upon myself to tell him.

"We can't go on like this."

He nods calmly, his face a mask.

"This has gone on far too long." For a moment, I wish with all my heart that this was like one of the silly times when we became unreasonable, later begging for another chance that was granted within the next second.

"When this plane touches down in Tokyo," Sasuke starts, and my heart wrenches because the finality he says the words with tells me that this is it. There's no going back. "We part ways."

_Ladies and gentlemen, please prepare for gate departure._

I tilt my head in acknowledgement, but some part buried inside me can't bear to see him gone forever, so I ask, "Will I ever see you again?"

Sasuke avoids my gaze. He's been doing that a lot lately. "I don't know."

I swallow hard, my heart thumping in my chest. I've known this conversation was coming up for days, weeks even, but to hear and see it all playing in front of me makes it hard to breathe, my stomach twisting itself in knots. It twists tighter and tighter with every fleeting though that passes my head, and though it contradicts everything I've told myself for months, it can't hurt to ask, so I do. My voice cracks as I open my mouth, "Do you think-"

"No."

The words crush me inside. My stomach twists again, but by now the only pain I feel is the one coming from my chest. It's painful, so painful.

Sasuke seems to notice, but I wonder if he truly cares at this point. "I'm sorry, Naruto. We've tried again and again, and our relationship is only getting worse."

I nod, biting the inside of my cheek to distract myself, countering pain with more pain. It makes me wonder, when did my thoughts stop wandering to him every time I spent daydreaming? When did the mere sight or mention of him stop making my heart flutter like a foolish princess in a fairytale? When did I stop believing that I needed his love more than my next breath? I don't know the answer to any of these questions. But the part that feels like shards of glass piercing into my heart is the fact that, even though I don't know when these things stopped happening, I know _why_. And Sasuke knows why, too.

_Ladies and gentlemen, please prepare for gate departure._

Pressure builds up behind my eyes. I'm only slightly aware of Sasuke shifting next to me, and I focus my sight out the small window of the plane.

The part that hurts more than knowing why, though, is acknowledging it. Because in the very second Sasuke and I realized that our love was a glass sculpture shattered into dust was the moment that all of our promises were broken. A myriad of silly proclamations of love, spur of the moment sworn oaths, but still promises: broken, because now they're simply cracked relics of the past. Because now… they don't matter anymore. They never did.

They say that the ones you love stay with you forever in your heart. But it's only now that I've realized that there's a huge, gaping hole in mine. But it's not Sasuke's fault; it's mine. I drove him out; I shouldn't be feeling this much pain over my own decision.

And I'm trying so _damn_ hard not to cry, torn between cherishing these last few hours we have or beginning the journey to distancing ourselves. My tears rise unbidden, but I refuse to let them fall under the pretense that there's no point.

But the question that continues to linger is, if I can feel this much grief at leaving him, wouldn't that mean that I still love him?

I quickly push those thoughts away, resigning myself to the fact that it's _supposed _to hurt. That this world is made out of pain, and those few moments of joy we manage to grasp are all at hand of a single choice of rebellion or obedience. Those few moments I had with Sasuke, I tell myself, are what made it worth it.

But that added height only made our resulting fall to the ground even more painful. It's not a thing that can be avoided, because as my old kindergarten teacher would say, _life isn't fair._

And because of that we throw whatever remains of our compassion to the wind, and with that our human complexity, becoming single-minded beasts in search of our own happiness.

I was lucky enough to experience that with Sasuke, singing lost lullabies to the angels in the architecture during our rampage, two beasts after one shred of happiness we thought would last us a lifetime. And in a way, it does. I've never forgotten a single thing Sasuke's taught me over the years, whether it was something as trivial as being selfless or something as grand as appreciating the beauty in simplicity.

Sasuke could always read me better than I could understand myself. He puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me toward him so that I am resting my head on his shoulder, in one final gesture of the love we once had. Normally, I would have pulled away for fear of pain overtaking me, but the few drops of liquid landing on the shirt my head was resting on made me stay.

Sasuke never cries.

It must be something else, I'm sure of it. I must be mistaken. And yet at the same time, Sasuke's chest shudders, and it pulls me to the edge. My own tears begin spilling over, and I'm so glad there is no one else sitting in our row of three. Once they start, they don't stop, the tears falling and producing large, wet drops among the ones of Sasuke's. But I realize that even though the thing that used to hold us close is gone, this breakup isn't because of ourselves.

It's because of each other. Because we still _care_ about each other.

A wry smile tugs at my lips. When we touch down in Tokyo, Sasuke had said, we part ways. For good or not, whether it would be emotional or silent, I can't help but think that…

Maybe, just maybe…

It's for the best.

_Ladies and gentlemen, please prepare for takeoff._

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**A/N: **I don't even know where this came from, cos I never EVER want to see Sasuke break up with Naruto. They shall live on half naked and married in my heart ;o;


End file.
